In recent years there has been widespread use of amino acid mixtures in nutritional compositions.
The use of such compositions for intravenous administration has become of particular importance.
In part, this is due to the recognition that amino acids help to maintain the proper nitrogen balance and necessary nutritional state of the body, serving as building blocks for body protein.
While there is voluminous literature describing both theoretical and practical approaches for obtaining free amino acid mixtures from whole protein by hydrolytic methods, (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,241,927, 2,460,040, 2,555,276 and 2,991,309) few if any of these methods are being employed commercially because of the technical problems, lack of high quality, inexpensive protein sources and/or the inherent cost factors due to processing.
In particular, prior art hydrolytic processes leading to amino acid mixtures do not, with limited exceptions (see e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,680,744), concern themselves with the removal of nutritionally undesirable contaminants or by-products such as peptides, iron and other heavy metals, as well as ammonia.
Thus, it would be desirable to have available a highly efficient, relatively inexpensive process for preparing, from readily available protein sources, amino acid mixtures free from undesirable contaminants, suitable for use in nutritional compositions, and particularly suitable for intravenous administration.